


The Capitol Mine Payroll

by engineerwenlock



Series: Wild West AU [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Bandits & Outlaws, Dialogue-Only, Drabble, Freeform, johanna corrupting gale, katniss and johanna friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 08:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16036556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engineerwenlock/pseuds/engineerwenlock
Summary: Katniss and Johanna tell the story of their first robbery together. Prequel, of sorts, to Wildcat





	The Capitol Mine Payroll

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a short drabble in which Katniss and Johanna tell the story of their first robbery together. I originally wanted to have them tell the story to Peeta and Haymitch in Wildcat, but Johanna leaves before Katniss is in any state to sit around jovially telling stories. So this is them telling the story to Jo's good friend and fellow outlaw, Finn Odair.

The first time I saw Katniss, she had just tried to kill me. 

If I had tried to kill you, you would be dead.  It was a warning shot. 

I felt a bullet whiz past my ear and I turned around to see this little slip of a girl - she can’t have been more than fourteen-

-I was sixteen. 

Anyway, she had been following me for who knows how long -  

-Half a mile.

And I hadn’t heard a sound.  I don’t know why she decided to  _ shoot _ me all of a sudden.

I was convinced you were a dangerous criminal-

\- I  _ am _ a dangerous criminal.  So are you - 

\- And I felt it necessary to warn you off my family. 

Though why I would would waste my time with a destitute widow or a baby-faced twelve-year old is beyond me.  I had a much larger target in mind. 

The Capitol Mine payroll.  

Five thousand dollars in cash, set to arrive by train at the end of the week.  Of course, stealing it would be the easy part. It was the getting away that always proved to be a trifle more difficult. So I decided to introduce the innocent young Ms. Everdeen to life of crime, and I asked her to help me with the job. 

I was hardly innocent.

Poaching and pick-pocketing barely count.   Anyway, as I expected, we got the money without firing a shot, and then we set about making the two ‘men’ who robbed the mine payroll disappear before the sheriff even got to the train station.  Kat here had a solo in her church choir’s Christmas concert, and the robbery nearly made her late to rehearsal.

Meanwhile, Jo hid the money in my friend’s basement. 

They caught me in the middle of a wardrobe change, but it wasn’t too difficult to make them believe they had caught me and Kat’s friend in the middle of something else.  Let’s just say, after that, they harbored no suspicions that I was a man at all, let alone the one who robbed the mine payroll. 

Anyway, we laid low for a couple of weeks, until the lawmen had all but given up. 

But eventually, it was time to skip town.  I asked Kat to come with me, and the rest is history.

And Hazelle -

\- That’s Kat’s friend’s ma - 

\- Has refused to let Jo back into her house unattended when we come back to visit.

And honestly, I can’t fathom why.  We gave them a share of the money, after all. 


End file.
